Daily Archives: March 15, 2017

“Doing Business 2017 is the 14th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time.

Doing Business measures aspects of regulation affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency.

Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in the ranking.

Data in Doing Business 2017 are current as of June 1, 2016. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why.”

“Issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Budget of the United States Government is a collection of documents that contains the budget message of the President, information about the President’s budget proposals for a given fiscal year, and other budgetary publications that have been issued throughout the fiscal year. Other related and… Continue Reading

“Wages of middle- and low-income earners increased in 2016 faster than wages of the highest earners. However, this increase does not come close to closing our nation’s income gap. The nation’s highest paid workers earn several times the wages of the lowest paid worker. The typical U.S. full-time worker earns $832 weekly. Hundreds of thousands… Continue Reading

Presidential Transitions: Issues Involving Outgoing and Incoming Administrations. L. Elaine Halchin, Coordinator, Specialist in American National Government. March 13, 2017. [via FAS] “The crux of a presidential transition is the transfer of executive power from the incumbent to the President-elect. Yet the transition process encompasses a host of activities, beginning with pre-election planning and continuing… Continue Reading

CRS report – Dark Web, Kristin Finklea, Specialist in Domestic Security. March 10, 2017. [via FAS] “The layers of the Internet go far beyond the surface content that many can easily access in their daily searches. The other content is that of the Deep Web, content that has not been indexed by traditional search engines… Continue Reading

“On July 21, 2016 we announced the creation of a $250K cash prize award for responsible disobedience. This idea came after a realization that there’s a widespread frustration from people trying to figure out how can we effectively harness responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging our norms, rules, or laws to benefit society. And so… Continue Reading

“The U.S. conducted 210 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962, with multiple cameras capturing each event at around 2,400 frames per second. But in the decades since, around 10,000 of these films sat idle, scattered across the country in high-security vaults. Not only were they gathering dust, the film material itself was slowly decomposing,… Continue Reading

Update, March 16, 2017 – The New York Times – 2 Federal Judges Halt Trump’s New Travel Ban – “Both rulings – the one in Hawaii more expansive than the one in Maryland — said the likely purpose of the president’s order was a de facto ban on Muslims.” Follow-up up to previous postings, Responses to… Continue Reading

FindLaw – “In 2015, the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act in an attempt to force the DOJ to publish its rules for conducting warrantless spying on journalists in the United States. The DOJ responded that it had supplied all of the documentation the Foundation… Continue Reading

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